To write on cricket tha wants to watch it

Dancing at Whitsun

(To fill a sad gap, I thought I’d revive this, which I originally published this time in 2010. The blog was a rather different beast in those days …)

I realise that, with all the excitement of the start of the cricket season, I’ve almost allowed what are often thought of as two of the most poetical of months – April and May – to go by with hardly a poem or song. So, as it’s Whit Sunday, here is a song which I think also works as a poem. The lyrics to Dancing at Whitsun (or Whitsun Dance) were written by Austin John Marshall, the husband of Shirley Collins; the tune is traditional. The version I know best is by Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor), though there also recorded versions by Shirley Collins and Maddy Prior with Tim Hart. I can’t find any of these on YouTube, so here is a version by “LiteGauge”, recorded as a tribute to Tim Hart.

The lyrics seem self-explanatory, but apparently had a slightly more specific context when they were written (the mid-1960s). It seems that folk dancing had come to be seen as predominantly an activity for old ladies (and sometimes denigrated for that reason), and the song suggests one reason why this might have been so.

Dancing at Whitsun, by Austin John Marshall

It’s fifty-one springtimes since she was a brideAnd still you may see her at each WhitsuntideIn a dress of white linen and ribbons of greenAs green as her memories of loving

The feet that were nimble tread carefully nowAs gentle a measure as age do allowThrough groves of white blossom, by fields of young cornWhere once she was pledged to her true love

The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow freeNo young men to tend them, nor pastures to seeThey have gone where the forests of oaktrees beforeHad gone to be wasted in battle

Down from their green farmlands and from their loved onesMarched husbands and brothers and fathers and sonsThere’s a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once wasAnd the ladies go dancing at Whitsun

There’s a row of straight houses in these latter daysAre covering the Downs where the sheep used to grazeThere’s a field of red poppies and a wreath from the QueenBut the ladies remember at WhitsunAnd the ladies go dancing at Whitsun